A Jab at Indonesia’s President-Elect as Parliament Curbs Local Voting

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Democracy in Indonesia suffered a major setback, analysts inside and outside the county said on Friday, when the outgoing Parliament passed a last-minute law eliminating direct elections for mayors, district chiefs and governors.

“For the first time, we have witnessed a major democratic reform being rescinded,” said Edward Aspinall, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

The measure was pushed through around 2 a.m. Friday by the Gerindra party, whose candidate for president, the former army general Prabowo Subianto, was defeated in a bitterly contested election in July. The winner, Joko Widodo, rose to prominence as a popular reformist mayor and governor.

Analysts said the law would further polarize an already politically divided country in a bruising election year, and represented a direct challenge to Mr. Widodo by the country’s political elite.

“They have been pushing back at him since the election, and are trying to send a message that ‘we are still here,’ ” said Effendi Gazali, a political analyst at the University of Indonesia. “It is proof that they are still very solid, at least for now.”

Analysts say that direct election of local officials, begun in 2005, was a linchpin of the country’s democratic transformation after decades of dictatorship under Sukarno and Suharto, when local officials were appointed. Mr. Joko, 53, a former carpenter born in a slum, was a major beneficiary of direct elections, the most visible of a growing group of leaders who have gained national attention for running relatively efficient and clean local governments and listening to the concerns of ordinary Indonesians.

Their popularity made them a threat to the country’s Jakarta-based national political parties and their leadership, analysts said. Mr. Joko’s campaign against Mr. Prabowo, a son-in-law of Suharto from a prominent Javanese family, was seen by many as a battle between a reform-minded political outsider and a figure from Indonesia’s authoritarian past.

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Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president-elect, center, leaving a swearing-in ceremony for local legislators in Jakarta on Friday.CreditDarren Whiteside/Reuters

Though they narrowly lost the presidency, Mr. Prabowo's party and its allies had a majority in the outgoing parliament and will control 68 percent of the seats in the new one, which will convene next Wednesday. Mr. Joko, who is due to be sworn in Oct. 20, “is in for a rough ride,” Mr. Effendi said.

“For me, I’m now not so sure who really won the election,” he said.

Eva Sundari, a lawmaker from Mr. Joko’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, said Mr. Prabowo’s right-wing coalition had made clear that it would try to thwart the incoming president’s policy agenda and block the way for more leaders like him to emerge. When they passed the electoral law early Friday, she said, the conservatives hailed it as their “first victory” against Mr. Joko, who has promised policies like free health care and education subsidies for the poor.

“If all his programs are stuck due to lack of cooperation in the Parliament, and at the district level by appointed district chiefs and mayors, Jokowi will be viewed as a failure in helping people,” Ms. Sundari said, using Mr. Joko’s popular nickname.

Senior members of Mr. Prabowo’s party argued that direct local elections were too expensive and plagued by political violence, and that they led to corruption. Opponents said that the new law, which calls for local officials to be appointed by local legislatures, posed a greater danger of corruption, vote-buying and horse trading, and that it would make officials less accountable to the people they govern.

Some analysts said Mr. Prabowo’s alliance may have overreached.

“This law came following a hasty debate with no public consultation,” said Paul Rowland, a political analyst and consultant based in Jakarta, “from a lame duck Parliament on its last day, which is seeking to impose something that the majority of Indonesians didn’t want and what the incoming government is opposed to. It put the opposition in a grasping and venal kind of light.”

Many Indonesians speculate that after Mr. Joko is sworn in, some of the political parties who now support Mr. Prabowo will defect to the new president’s side. Burhanuddin Muhtadi, executive director of Indikator Politik, a prominent polling organization, said the voting on the election law reflected maneuvering by parties that were jockeying for position.

A coalition of advocacy groups that support direct local elections said they intended to appeal to the country’s Constitutional Court to reject the new law. Bima Arya Sugiarto, who was elected mayor of Bogor in West Java Province last year, supported that idea.

“It’s not over yet, friends,” he posted on his Twitter account Friday. “There is still a hope.”